PUBLISHED WORK

Today, I gathered

the strawberries that

grew wild after you 

left. Snipped the runners

running from their beds,

flicked baby slugs from 
the underbellies

of serrated leaves,

deposed red berries 
from their sprouted crowns....

DIDO BAKES A PIE

When winter gives way to wet,
our breath more water than air,
you think of flowers:

snowdrops and cherry blossoms,
lilacs pearled in purple-beaded bundles,

erroneous crocuses....

DEMETER SCRUBS THE BATHTUB

He’s the original Adam, cable-knit sweater pulled down

over his missing rib. He’s thinking about ending things

with Eve—not because he doesn’t love her, I mean God,

look at their history—but because he can’t remember...

ONLY ONE

I begin with the smallest ornaments, start at the top
and work my way down, lift the fine filament hooks
from every browning branch. The tree’s fragrance rises
at each violation, its pine scent strong and tangible.
It stretches like an animal above my head....

HERA TAKES DOWN THE CHRISTMAS TREE

The little girls watch Peter Pan in the living room, bare 
toes curled against the arm of the overstuffed 
chair they share under a zebra-striped blanket. 

An animated Captain Hook shoots 
one of his mates in the middle of a song.
Smee genuflects in his chubby humble way....

SLAP/STICK

It starts with the hemistich hitch in her step.

A henchwoman’s tell, regret stopping up the gait

with sediment. This moon’s stepdaughter can’t keep

swindling tarot cards and sneaking roofies

into her own whiskey-gingers...

SHOAL

The heroes have autographed the table again
with their glasses, rings of condensation
in looped cursive circles that interrupt

each other’s epics. We take turns
riding to the shoreline
to measure the water’s rise....

THE VALKYRIES CLEAR THE TABLE

If it weren’t for the air frothed thick with lilacs
it would feel like August. The lawn under my bare feet
still warm from the sun, even beneath the moon’s round face.
It’s nearly one a.m., late for this morning girl,
but I couldn’t sleep with the laundry out and rain coming....

SOMETHING SHINING UP

The hollows of what would have been

my children pock the mud in mucky swallows—

not even the clamor of shattered shell

or broken bones, just the gulping absences

sunk among reeds and sweet-grass....

WHAT'S LEFT

Someone is whistling in the dark alleys

left over from winter. The soggy ditch where green

hasn’t reached yet, or the thicket growing over

the gutter. A chickadee, maybe, eyes

buried in the shadow of his black fedora...

SPRING, AS DIRECTED BY ALFRED HITCHCOCK

They ask what’s the point—a life cycle

bookended by shit, all for a vacation inside

your black and shiny body.

But hasn’t everyone wanted to be

someone else for a while? Smudged

the line between enchanted and enchained?

POSSESSION

In your branches cathedrals gather,
twist in fine green tendrils. My clinging
runners curl ahead to scatter
in your bones. It feels holy,
doesn’t it? Let me froth your marrow,
let me lather bells across your body,
let me in. Lovers should be close....

SPIRE; FIRST IMPRESSION; A CORNER TO HAUNT